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Mr. Pranay Kumar with Consul General of India, Sydney.

Simplification of Banking Business at 

State Bank of India, Sydney Branch 

Banking is a rapidly changing industry, and the biggest paradigm shift in simplifying the banking services that has occurred is the move to digital-only banks. Below, we've outlined some of the key points on future banking and mobile Banking including the future of investment banking, innovations in online banking, and how these new players are simplifying Business Complexities. 

Innovation Banking
As fintechs have flooded the scene and disrupted the financial industry, traditional banks have had to innovate in order to stay ahead of the pack.

Corporate investors, specifically traditional players, have started to increase their fintech investments in the last couple of years. This trend is likely to continue in the coming years as incumbents try to stake their claim to the most innovative fintech startups.

On top of this, the biggest banks have already set aside major resources to digitize their businesses. In fact, more than 40% of North American banks have dedicated more than 25% of their IT budget to digital transformation. This can include developing new consumer-facing products and services and modernizing core transactional systems.

To achieve this goal, most traditional banks are using third-party suppliers or aim to  acquire fintech startups for education and mutual benefit.

Business simplification – SBI success story by TCS #
State Bank of India is on a mission to improve the experience of its stakeholders.

State Bank of India (SBI) offers an array of services to its vast clientele across 25,000+ branches and 32 countries. SBI’s branches have traditionally served as the most popular and primary customer service touch-points. However, SBI wanted to empower its customers to avail services through digital channels—while inside a physical branch or on the move. SBI also wanted to tap the vast unbanked masses of India and drive financial inclusion.

SBI has always had a loyal customer base and high brand recall, but to effectively engage with gen next, they needed a digital transformation.

TCS conceptualized and implemented transformation program across digital channels. TCS designed and deployed several transformational programs for the staff and customers of SBI. For staff, TCS agile initiative ‘CBS Roopantar’, offers the bank’s 160,000+ tellers real-time and meaningful customer insights. 

TCS team also spearheaded channel re-imagination, business process re-engineering, a customer analytics and insights engine, and included several self-service and personalization features to improve productivity and efficiency.

For SBI’s customers, ‘Customer Channel Roopantar’ included several breakthrough initiatives:

SBI Digi Voucher: a green banking initiative that provides digital alternatives to paper vouchers through a multi-channel solution and as a mobile app.
SBI Video Statement: animated and voice-guided customer-level statements, complete with analytics and customers spending patterns.
SBI Scribe: a solution that converts non-digital data (handwritten text) into digital data (system readable) to drive high-level efficiencies in account opening and KYC.
SBI Mingle: a solution that provides access to banking operations from social media.

State Bank of India’s digital transformation improved productivity and delights customers

This simplification process adopted (a) simplified processes, (b) decongested branches, (c) created customer-centric processes, and (d) enabled efficient staff operations –with a single shot approval process, empowering SBI’s employees to cater to the bank’s digital growth plans.

Digi Bank – Way ahead..

State Bank of India (SBI) is working on its own digital bank – SBI Digi Bank – which it plans to launch in the next three to six months.

“SBI in coming days are working on a digital-only bank where no individual will be visible to the customer and all transactions will be done with the help of apps, internet banking and mobile banking.

It is planned to offer current and savings/deposits accounts, loans, insurance, mutual funds investment, and personal financial management (PFM).

SBI Digi Bank will use the Aadhaar infrastructure, created by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), to onboard customers and provide them with online services. UIDAI collects the biometric and demographic data of residents, stores them in a centralised database, and issues a 12-digit unique identity number – Aadhaar – to each resident.

State Bank of India Sydney- How it all began?

State Bank of India had set its foot print in the city of Sydney, Australia as early as November 1988 as a Representative Office. After being granted license by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA), we started our operations as a branch of a foreign bank and rolled out a range of services such as deposits, remittances, trade finance solutions and syndicated loans. 

​The Sydney Branch was opened with the objectives, inter alia, to foster the trade between India and Australia through trade finance products and credit and to help Indian Corporates to access the financial market in Australia. However, in our journey so far we have managed to achieve more than that, by successfully collaborating with many Australian Business houses and Banks.

Our journey here has been a journey of growth, success and fruitful partnerships.

Today, we have a thriving Credit and Treasury Departments with our team of experts dedicated for project finance, syndicated loan and medium and long term loans to Australian as well as Indian Corporates.

As of today, our credit portfolio includes major industry players and we have extended credit facilities to the biggest names in sectors like retail, mining, energy and FMCG.In Trade Finance, SBI Sydney has been a very prominent player .The range of services offered by us in includes Bill discounting, Issuance and Confirmation of Letter of credits, Bank Guarantees etc. At present the volume of trade between Australia and India is estimated to around 15 billion dollars. Our trade finance department facilitates through services like short term foreign currency loans, letters of credits, bank guarantees and caters to around 7 % of the entire volume.

SBI Sydney also has correspondent banking relationship with many prominent banks all over the world which makes a us a suitable partner in trade.

While Credit and Trade remains today the primary business verticals of our branch, we believed from the very beginning that no bank is complete without having connected to the people, the individuals and understanding their need.

To provide a solution to the need of the large Indian community based in Australia to transfer their hard earned savings to their motherland we lodged a web-based platform Remittance services in 2010.Inspite of the cut throat competition in the remittance market, today we can boast of loyal customer bases exceeding 30000 customers, placed all across Australia who are satisfied customers of our remittance services.

We also provide solutions to the non-resident customers of SBI branches in India by facilitating in services like account opening, retail loans and life certificates. While our achievements so far will continue to be an inspiration for our future, at SBI Sydney our motto is to ensure that we think out-of-the-box and take initiatives that enable us to provide world class service. 

We remain committed to our goal of facilitating business requirements of Indian and Australian corporate houses and thereby playing a most prominent role in the growth of trade and business in the two countries.

Simplification of Business model at Sydney Branch 

​During November 2017 SBI Sydney introduced Mobile Banking Services to its Customers.  The mobile banking application has been made available for download in both Google Store & Apple Store.

In a small function held at the office premises of State Bank of India at 264 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Hon’ble Consul General of India Shri B. Vanlalvawna officially launched the ‘SBI Australia Anywhere’-a smart mobile Banking application.

Customers of State Bank of India, Sydney would be able to download the application and login with their existing online banking user credentials.  At present, limited functionalities including account balance enquiry, transaction search etc. are rolled out.  Full scale functionalities such as online transactions, foreign exchange etc. will be rolled out in due course.

The Bank expects this digital product to connect better with tech-savvy young generation.   This is another step towards increasing the digital experience for the customers. SBI Sydney currently under process of many other digital banking products, which shall be launched in the coming months.

Reference
# TCS or Tata Consultancy Services is a global Leader in IT Services, Consulting, Technology and Digital Solutions with a Large Network of Innovation & Delivery Centers - https://www.tcs.com/sbi-digital-transformation
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Mr. Pranay Kumar

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
State Bank of India, Sydney

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Mr. Pranay Kumar has been working with State Bank of India (premier fortune 500 company and among top 50 globally banks) for more than two decades.

Mr. Pranay holds an Executive MBA from S.P. Jain Institute of Management, Mumbai and gained expert knowledge on Merger & Acquisition from IIM Ahmedabad.    

Mr. Pranay has extensive hands on experience in Project Finance and in past has managed in deal structuring for Energy, Roadways, Telecom & Hydrocarbon.